Dictation and Speech Recognition Blog

Dragon Medical Practice Edition 4 vs Dragon Medical One

Whats the Difference?

We are frequently asked what is the difference between Dragon Medical One and Dragon Medical Practice Edition 4. Let’s start with Dragon Medical Practice Edition 4 as it was released in January 2018 and this is the first update to the software in about five years.

Dragon Medical Practice Edition 4

Dragon Medical Practice is based off of the same technology used for Dragon Medical One, so they both offer similar performance. The main difference between the two products is this: Dragon Medical Practice is installed and runs locally on your computer’s hard drive. It uses your computer’s local resources for memory, processing power, and storage. Your voice profile will only be accessible on that particular workstation (note: you can still install Dragon Medical Practice Edition on up to 4 computers). If you have multiple exam rooms and would like to do dictation from home install it on a laptop while you’re traveling, you can. The recognition engine is quite phenomenal, within 30 seconds can set up your user ID and begin dictating. Nuance has spent a lot of time in research and development to get to this point. Many years ago you had to read different sentences for the software to learn your voice patterns. This is no longer the case. Dragon Medical even accounts for accented users, non-native English-speaking users, and other dialects.

Dragon Medical One

As of this writing (August 2018), Dragon Medical One has been available to the market for just over a year. It offers some distinct advantages over Dragon Medical Practice. The biggest appeal is that your profile is stored in the cloud, meaning any computer you have access to can use your medical voice recognition profile. All of your customized words and templates (word expansions) are available anywhere. Additionally, your voice profile is automatically backed up and protected by being stored in the cloud. The pricing for this model is different, as you pay a monthly subscription fee. But paying the fee has its advantages. With the monthly subscription fee, the automatic backup of your voice profile, as well as access to all the latest and greatest updates for improvements to speed accuracy and language modeling, are included.

Additionally included in the cost of both Dragon Medical Practice Edition 4 and Dragon Medical One, we at Voice Automated include installation, training and support for lifetime of the product. We are available after hours and on the weekends – this is important especially when you need to document the patient record during off hours.